{{ To my knowledge,... }} ...Today we got the most "Nothing" Update that has ever existed since the 2 years ago I quit this game before only returning recently.

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And I'm not just talking about cutting the Lifeskill XP bonus off at the knees when there's GURUS out there sitting on hundreds in extra Mastery thanks to no-lifing.  It's a perfect pattern for what I know to still be true about this game after hearing rumors about what TET manos lifeskillers make per day, or having seen quoted on this forums what 300AP grinders bring in every hour @ Elvia.   This is way beyond just "super high AP gives you higher DP than other people too" design imbalances that always plagued this game in the past.

To put is succinctrly, it's clear that this Design Team has tied up almost all development, and all weekly updates in ATTEMPTING to close gear gaps, but they only close it so far as to get Casual and "returning" players to the first Base Camp of the "Idiot Mountain".    Anyone who don't know what Idiot Mountain is, it's a reference to Dunning-Kruger, as in people who are too Dumb or just inexperienced to understand that they haven't even gotten to the first real plataus of a mountain, in order to get a real view of where the real Summit of it is....

All these Catch Up mechanics are only good for getting players to a point where all they can see is the Clouds obscurring the real mountain Peaks.   Most of their catchup resources just pours onto the market where it trickles directly up to the PEN "ownership class" who are essentially capeable of listing 1000's of items every hours that are worth 1-3 mil silver each like some kind of Black Desert AMAZON warehouse.   It's Un-Equal trade because the entire Gear System which enables this, was always giving Exponentially greater leverage to the luckiest real-money Pay-Piggies and basically nothing to anyone else.     "Leverage" is a Financial term by the way....   It literally means a system that is rigged to give preferential "Returns" to a lucky few, while an entirely different system exists for everyone else to gate keep a much lower set of dividends for the Masses.

Until the Devs actually admit that this is not just "a problem", but THE main problem.... everything they're doing is a Lie to string along more gullible idiots to the base of Idiot Mountain where they're nothing more than "CONTENT" aka: fodder for the PENor-ship individuals who can literally manipulate Territory control and an Economy now ... that was specifically designed with Price Caps and regulation everywhere, which not even W.O.W. Marketeers would have been able to manipulate years ago.

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I'm not even Mad at this point by the way... I'm just disappointed to see development so confused and drinking its own Koolaid in its attempts to "even out Gear Scores" with all these Schizophrenic mixed messagings.  It's clear by their own "changes" explanations that they have lost the plot or are talking out of both sides of their mouths and it's a huge waste of their Time and Talents that they could be using to fix all of the other problems that you people bring up here on the Daily.  In other words, all this Catch Up isn't bad becaus it's "Hand Outs" or "Wellfare" as your worst Smug Elitists still inhabiting these forums would have you all believe.  That's just more clap-trap of the Culture-War enguling the internet right now, ignore those charlatans and fake billionaires because they're still at the base of Idiot Mountain too.  No,  It's BAD because it's all a LIE.  It's the Devs literally lying to themselves because they don't understand just how far into the looking glass they've gone while dragging every other sensible Social-Life possessing person in with them.

Here is everything.......... just take it.  Whatever you want.  Have every item.  No need to work for any of it.

Now what are you going to do with it?

Oh what? WHAT? Your quitting the game?  Why?  Oh you have nothing left to obtain so your existence has no purpose.

let's face it, even if the dev gave you full pen c20 include newest accessories with every character at 2000 mastery with all the end game lifeskill gear, you still not gonna play the game, people like you just not gonna stick with any games that's just a fact

so instead of trying to change bdo into another game which you won't play for long anyway, why not go play games like wow where you AFK for a few hours a day and get max gear in a couple of days then quit as well 

Wow max gear in a couple days? uh not true, maybe a couple months (weekly loot cap on top end game raids) -- New raid tier = new best gear = do it again.  Same in FF14.

The OP is right about something thats a BIG detail most people ignore, rather than trying to fix/improve the systems in game to balance progression, to balance pvp, etc they spend LOTS of Dev time on catch up content that doesnt really catch anyone up to anyone.

Bottom line for BDO is either be very very rich IRL or Grind your life away for years to be powerful. 

Ppl can say "well then this game isnt for you" okay maybe thats true, but i can probably say either "you dont feel stupid for wasting all that money on a virtual reality?" or "dont you feel like your wasting your life playing a game 24/7 for 5 years?"  

i think both are valid points as well.

I know it takes a bit longer than a couple of days, but you get my point, WOW/FF14/destiny 2 where you reach the artificial "new" season cap and those are easy to achieve but you just repeat the same thing every season and quit the game, games like those designed for short span players; BDO is the opposite of that kind of games, for me at least, I get enjoyment out of "wasting your life playing a game 24/7 for 5 years", heck I rotate between 2 games include BDO every day, that's because I have to do some really tedious afk daily activities, otherwise I will only be playing BDO, it's just not a game designed for short span gamers, some people just can't accept that.

Well to put it simply, this is a pure example of what happens when a game is designed around it's cash shop based RNG systems. You either accept that fact and be content for whales, and the RNG carried jackpot winners to enjoy. Or you simply do like countless others and stop playing it.

Here is a good example of what happens in a unregulated for profit RNG environment. Person A just make BiS PENs left and right like it's candy at a <3% "shown" success rate. While Person B and others will go on and fail to succeed at a 90% "shown" chance 14 times in a row to pop a DUO. At this point only SIMPs and innocent people will try to tell you it's not a scam. Just go do a simple experiment yourself with the many Random Number Generators. You'll find out the shit that is common in BDO at the "shown" enhancement chances realistically have less than a 0.5% chance of happening.

What happens in BDO, is a perfect example of why casinos are highly regulated. Or else they would pull this same scam. You just either accept it and subject yourself to it, or quit. 

It's a delicate balancing scale that can NEVER be avoided.

The value of playing will always be diminished the more "catch up mechanics" there are.  Thus you can make people catch up faster, but it will ALWAYS be at the cost of those who put in the time to get there.

Once upon a time achieving level 60 was an accomplishment that tooks months of pure hardcore grinding.  It had a prestige.  A value.

Today a level 60 is meaningless.

What are you on about? There is not a single catch up mechanic in BDO. They simple can't not exist along side, in a game where players get exponentially stronger the higher they get in gear. The fact that you and other's call these catch up mechanics is just silly. At best you can call them a low costing demo to the real game. (Playing at spots where stats on your gear and income/hour is at least 5 times higher.)

If you look at all the rest of the MMOs that actually have catchup mechanics. You'll noticed that these catch up mechanics put you right in striking range of 6+ plus year old vets. BDO don't have that at all.

What BDO has is you can grind your butt off to get 248AP/305DP, and make a average of say 60 to 80 million silver per hour. Meanwhile higher geared players are at 300+ AP/360+DP, and make a average of 300+ million silver per hour getting even more overpowering gear. That repeats itself in BDO infinitely. Meaning this joke notion of catchup mechanics in BDO is just that, a joke. 

Haha, look at this video: 

It shows both the mentality of the kinds of people who commit to no lifing shitty games like these and the scumbag companies that make them. 
"I don't want to make myself look like a loser who wasted his finances and life away on a shitty game because of MaH PrOGrEsS" 

That may be true if the game was PvE only..but it does have PvP..maybe he wants to be able to compete in nodewars or have fun grinding in the Arsha channel playing king of the grinding zone.

Not everyone gets bored once they finish gearing up. For most thats when the fun begins. The comradery of competition in a game with open world PvP.